Formation from the Pulpit
When you think back over your lifetime, who are the people that taught you about God? About Jesus? About the Bible? About prayer? About faith? About the church? Can you remember their names? If you close your eyes, can you see their faces or hear their voices? What are the lessons that you can still recall years later?
I can remember several Sunday school teachers and youth ministers who helped me learn what it means to be a Christian. I had camp counselors who taught me how to read the Bible and how to pray. I listened to plenty of sermons, some of which were good and some of which were not, but I do not remember any of the ordained ministers from my childhood as having a particularly formative role in my life. I felt cared for and supported by them, but their contribution to my faith was more a ministry of presence and leadership than a ministry of instruction or discipleship.
More than anyone else, however, my parents were instrumental in my formation as a Christian. We prayed together. We talked about Bible stories. After church, we often reviewed the sermons we had heard and the Sunday school lessons we had received. In general, we discussed ways in which our faith informed how we lived our lives.
I hope the same is true for the children and youth who grow up at St. Paul’s. We have dedicated teachers, catechists, children’s chapel leaders, youth group facilitators, VBS volunteers, chaperones, and choir leaders, all of whom love our children and youth and help them learn about Christianity. They do an excellent job of forming our youngest members as disciples of Jesus. But we still believe that the primary teachers in our congregation are our parents. One of our most important responsibilities, therefore, is to help parents help their children grow up immersed in the way of Jesus, but I am not sure how well we do that.
Of course, formation is not only for children and parents. Many people at St. Paul’s came to the Christian faith relatively late in life, and others who have been Christians for decades still do not feel like they know what it means to follow Jesus. Formation for all ages is important. Learning about the faith and being formed as Jesus’ disciples are not pursuits for a few of us. They are the work of the whole church—the normative practice of all the members of the Body of Christ.
In the last few weeks, I have had three separate conversations that have changed the way I think about formation in our church, and I want to offer some ideas I have after reflecting on all three.
First, I spoke with someone who had grown up in The Episcopal Church but had never really been taught how to pray. She recalled for me that, as a teenager, despite having been regular in worship and other church programs for her entire life, no one had ever taken the time to teach her how to respond with prayer to whatever need or crisis arose. As I heard her words, my heart began to race. When was the last time I taught someone how to pray? Are our children and youth programs adequately preparing our youngest members for a life of prayer? Are my own children learning how to pray? Have I ever taught them? In thirty years, would they be confessing to their minister that, despite having grown up as the children of an Episcopal priest, they still did not know how to pray?
Second, I called a colleague to ask his opinion about the most important things on which a priest should focus. I had been interviewing candidates for our third full-time priest position, and I wanted his input on the best way to structure the continued formation of whomever we will call into that role. Without hesitation, he said that the Sunday-morning experience should be our primary focus. Everything from signage to bulletins, music to sermon, ushers to announcements, coffee hour to follow-up in the coming days—everything needed to be meticulously planned and zealously maintained in order for anyone and everyone who comes through the door to have a positive encounter with God and our community. When I asked about other important things—like outreach, communications, pastoral care, and formation—he tied them all back to the Sunday-morning experience. If we are not focused on connecting with people on Sundays, he argued, we never will.
As I thought about the people who come to St. Paul’s each week, I quickly realized how important Sunday mornings really are. If we average 400 people each Sunday, how many of those individuals also come to another offering outside of Sunday-morning worship—like a Bible study, an outreach opportunity, a centering prayer group, or a choir rehearsal? The answer is plenty. There are lots of people who engage the life of our church outside of worship on Sunday, but the majority of the people who come to St. Paul’s only come on Sundays, and those who have become active in other offerings almost always started with Sunday worship.
Third, in book study with colleagues, a friend recalled with amazement how participants in an intensive Bible study he had led were surprised to learn that Jesus was serious about taking up our cross in order to follow him. It seems, my friend suggested, that even devoted members of his congregation could not distinguish between things Jesus had actually said and things Jesus’ followers liked to say because they sounded good.
Overall, the level of biblical literacy in mainline Protestant congregations has waned significantly over the last few generations. As a result, another colleague observed, preachers who once focused on proclamation have begun to emphasize education. In other words, instead of assuming a shared understanding of scripture that allows a preacher to tell their congregations what God is saying in a particular passage of scripture, preachers have begun teaching their congregations how to read the Bible and recognize within it the Word of God.
A conversation with someone who had gone to church for years and never learned how to pray. A reflection on the importance of the Sunday-morning experience. An experience of the general decline in faithful formation across mainline Christianity. How did these three conversations come together to help me think about formation at St. Paul’s in a new way?
I think I have underestimated the value of the sermon as the principal opportunity for Christian formation in a parish. Usually, when I prepare a sermon, I begin by reading the lessons on Monday morning. Even during that first encounter with the texts, I ask myself what God is saying to our congregation in this particular moment through these particular passages. It may take me several days of prayer, study, and reflection to figure it out, but, right from the start, I trust that one or more of these biblical texts contains a specific message that we are supposed to hear. My job, then, is to seek the Holy Spirit’s help in identifying and proclaiming it. That is not a bad way to approach a sermon, but I wonder if there is also value in taking a wider view.
What happens if I start not only with the biblical texts but also with the foundational questions of Christian formation that we need to be asking? What does our congregation need to learn? What are the areas of basic discipleship that we need to teach in order to raise up faithful followers of Jesus? What are the basics of Christianity that we have not talked about in a while? In our tradition, which relies on a prescribed lectionary, I do not think that the preacher can be faithful to God and the church if they completely disregard the appointed lessons, but I do think faithful sermons can begin as much as with the perceived needs of the congregation as with the lessons that will be read on Sunday.
This week, I am preaching, and I plan focus on the reading from 1 Kings 19. In particular, I hope to explore not only the story of Elijah’s encounter with God on Mount Horeb, but I want to use it to talk more generally about how Christians are supposed to read the Old Testament. I think most of us are not sure what to make of the Hebrew scriptures and how to incorporate them into our lives as disciples of Jesus, and a Sunday-morning sermon may be our best chance to explore that together.
During the first three weeks in July, I hope to offer a short series on prayer by focusing on the psalm appointed for each week. At the end of each sermon, I hope you will leave with a clear sense of how you can deepen your prayer life. Beyond that, I do not know how often my preaching will take on a formative focus, and, even when it does, I am not sure how different the sermons themselves will be. I can tell you that I am approaching my role and identity as preacher differently, and I pray that the results will be faithful and fruitful.
Yours faithfully,
Evan D. Garner
